Thursday, December 31, 2009

Some distressing civil liberties questions must be asked about an ever-lengthening list of decisions, proposals, and observations by President Obama.

To begin, Obama is the first president to give an international law enforcement organization like Interpol free rein within the territorial confines of this nation, presumably not excluding the arrest and exportation of Americans to be charged with crimes under international law.

Put simply, this means the Constitution is no longer the supreme law of the land in America. Thanks to Executive Order 12425 , which Obama signed Dec. 16 without explaining why, the supreme law of the land is now arguably whatever Interpol says it is, most likely as directed by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, in conjunction with the United Nations.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

In short, "Avatar" tells the tale of a disabled Marine, Jake Sully, who -- through the wonders of movie magic -- occupies the body of a 10-foot-tall alien so he can live among the mystical forest denizens of the moon world Pandora. Sully is sent in mufti, like a futuristic Lawrence of Arabia, to further the schemes of the evil corporate nature-rapists desperate to obtain the precious mineral "unobtainium" (no, really). Jake inevitably goes native, embraces the eco-faith of Pandora's Na'Vi inhabitants and their tree goddess, the "all mother," and rallies the Pandoran aborigines (not to mention the Pandoran ecosystem itself) against the evil forces of a thinly veiled 22nd century combine of Blackwater and Halliburton.

The film has been subjected to a sustained assault from many on the right, most notably by Ross Douthat in the New York Times, as an "apologia for pantheism." Douthat's criticisms hit the mark, but the most relevant point was raised by John Podhoretz in the Weekly Standard. Cameron wrote "Avatar," says Podhoretz, "not to be controversial, but quite the opposite: He was making something he thought would be most pleasing to the greatest number of people."

What would have been controversial is if -- somehow -- Cameron had made a movie in which the good guys accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts.

Of course, that sounds outlandish and absurd, but that's the point, isn't it? We live in an age in which it's the norm to speak glowingly of spirituality but derisively of traditional religion. If the Na'Vi were Roman Catholics, there would be boycotts and protests. Make the oversized Smurfs Rousseauian noble savages and everyone nods along, save for a few cranky right-wingers.

Does living in a blue state make people blue? It seems so, according to a new study in Science magazine that ranks states according to their happiness. The study finds that New Yorkers are the unhappiest people in America and their neighbors in Connecticut come in a close second, followed by Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, California, and Illinois. And the happiest states? Drum roll, please…Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee, and Arizona.

Eight of the ten happiest states lean right while eight of the ten unhappiest tilt left. While the study by no means proves that being liberal makes people unhappy, it does reflect some of the unfortunate implications of living in a blue state.

A pastor and his wife remained behind bars Friday, December 18, after they were mistreated by militants and police detained them for “forceful” conversion of Hindus to Christianity in India’s state of Karnataka, Christians said.

The arrest in Mysore, Karnataka’s second-largest city, reportedly came after about 15 militants of the radical Hindu group Bajrang Dal stormed the house church of Pastor H. T Manjunath and his wife Saraswati, where they allegedly beat up the couple.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Today, with a global financial crisis underway and oil prices halved from their highs, even Dubai has fallen on hard times. As unemployment takes its toll, the number of abandoned vehicles has risen by 20%.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Christmas famously "comes but once a year." In fact, however, it comes twice. The Christmas of the Nativity, the manger and Christ child, the wise men and the star of Bethlehem, "Silent Night" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" is one holiday. The Christmas of parties, Santa Claus, evergreens, presents, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Jingle Bells" is quite another.

But because both celebrations fall on Dec. 25, the two are constantly confused. Religious Christians condemn taking "the Christ out of Christmas," while First Amendment absolutists see a threat to the separation of church and state in every poinsettia on public property and school dramatization of "A Christmas Carol."

A little history can clear things up.

The Christmas of parties and presents is far older than the Nativity. Most ancient cultures celebrated the winter solstice, when the sun reaches its lowest point and begins to climb once more in the sky. In ancient Rome, this festival was called the Saturnalia and ran from Dec. 17 to Dec. 24. During that week, no work was done, and the time was spent in parties, games, gift giving and decorating the houses with evergreens. (Sound familiar?) It was, needless to say, a very popular holiday.

In its earliest days, Christianity did not celebrate the Nativity at all. Only two of the four Gospels even mention it. Instead, the Church calendar was centered on Easter, still by far the most important day in the Christian year. The Last Supper was a Seder, celebrating Passover, which falls on the day of the full moon in the first month of spring in the Hebrew calendar. So in A.D. 325, the Council of Nicea decided that Easter should fall on the Sunday following the first full moon of spring. That's why Easter and its associated days, such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, are "moveable feasts," moving about the calendar at the whim of the moon.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

With Democratic senators united on the health care bill today, their campaign arm has settled on an attack plan for 2010: Republicans would "repeal" it if they win control.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, aggressively challenging incumbent GOP senators and vying for open seats, will paint the Republicans as only interested in obstructing.

So, the Democrats' attack plan is to tell voters that the GOP will repeal the budget-busting, tax-hiking, Medicare-cutting, abortion-funding, big insurance and big pharma giveaway that only has the support of 35% of voters. Brilliant!

This Christmas season, 78% of Americans identify with some form of Christian religion, a proportion that has been declining in recent decades. The major reason for this decline has been an increase in the percentage of Americans claiming no religious identity, now at 13% of all adults.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

During his presidency, Ronald Reagan granted the global police agency Interpol the status of diplomatic personnel in order to engage more constructively on international law enforcement. In Executive Order 12425, Reagan made two exceptions to that status. The first had to do with taxation, but the second was to make sure that Interpol had the same accountability for its actions as American law enforcement — namely, they had to produce records when demanded by courts and could not have immunity for their actions.

Barack Obama unexpectedly revoked those exceptions in a change to EO 12425 last month, as Threats Watch reports:

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Why am I so paranoid? I'm not cheating on my husband, committing crimes or doing drugs. But those are battles my cosmopolitan, progressive friends would understand. Many of them had to come out -- as gay, as alcoholics, as artists in places where art was not valued. To them, my situation is far more sinister: I am the bane of their youth, the boogeyman of their politics, the very thing they left their small towns to escape. I am a Christian.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Here are some thoughts on where things stand in the aftermath of the certain passage of the Senate health-care bill.

1. Few Democrats understand the depth and intensity of opposition that exists toward them and their agenda, especially regarding health care. Passage of this bill will only heighten the depth and intensity of the opposition. We’re seeing a political tsunami in the making, and passage of health-care legislation would only add to its size and force.

2. This health-care bill may well be historic, but not in the way the president thinks. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything quite like it: passage of a mammoth piece of legislation, hugely expensive and unpopular, on a strict party-line vote taken in a rush of panic because Democrats know that the more people see of ObamaCare, the less they like it.

3. The problem isn’t simply with how substantively awful the bill is but how deeply dishonest and (legally) corrupt the whole process has been. There’s already a powerful populist, anti-Washington sentiment out there, perhaps as strong as anything we’ve seen. This will add kerosene to that raging fire.

Toward the end of this Golden Age of Hollywood, the movie industry was selling 9.43 tickets per person in the United States and Canada, but now sells only about 4.1 tickets per person.

Also, nearly two decades of research by Movieguide, a non-profit family guide to movies and entertainment supported by Christian donors and general subscriptions, shows that family friendly movies with no graphic sex, violence, and obscene language earn more than two to six times as much money at the box office, on average, as movies with such graphic content.

That’s exactly what Movieguide tells Hollywood’s top executives each year in Movieguide’s Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry (which is also highlighted at the Annual Movieguide Faith & Values Awards Gala held each February and attended by many of those executives).

Ironically, a study released by the Parents Television Council in 2008 revealed that the amount of foul language on primetime network TV has skyrocketed since 1998. Meanwhile, a study of foul language in G, PG, and PG-13 movies revolving around teenagers by three Brigham Young University professors shows that the 1980s movies they studied averaged 35 obscenities or profanities per movie, but decreased to 25 per movie in the 1990s and 16 per movie in the current decade, in the wake of Movieguide®’s annual study, which began in 1991.

This is no surprise to Movieguide®, which reported a 2006 poll by The Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg that most teenagers are offended by depictions of foul language and sex in movies and television.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

"I try to avoid hyperbole, but I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had."—Nat Hentoff

Nat HentoffNat Hentoff has had a life well spent, one chock full of controversy fueled by his passion for the protection of civil liberties and human rights. Hentoff is known as a civil libertarian, free speech activist, anti-death penalty advocate, pro-lifer and not uncommon critic of the ideological left.

Friday, December 18, 2009

It is exactly this species of tyranny that the UN would like to impose upon the entire planet, in the name of saving us from ourselves – or, as Ugo Chavez would put it, saving us from Western capitalist democracy.

A few weeks ago, at a major conference in New York, I spoke about this tendency towards tyranny with Dr. Vaclav Klaus, the distinguished economist and doughty fighter for freedom and democracy who is President of the Czech Republic.

While we still have one or two statesmen of his caliber, there is hope for Europe and the world. Unfortunately, he refused to come to Copenhagen, telling me that there was no point, now that the lunatics were firmly in control of the asylum.

However, I asked him whether the draft Copenhagen Treaty’s proposal for what amounted to a communistic world government reminded him of the Communism under which he and his country had suffered for so long.

He thought for a moment – as statesmen always do before answering an unusual question – and said, “Maybe it is not brutal. But in all other respects, what it proposes is far too close to Communism for comfort.”

Today, as I lay in the snow with a cut knee, a bruised back, a banged head, a ruined suit, and a written-off coat, I wondered whether the brutality of the New World Order was moving closer than President Klaus – or any of us – had realized.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas out there -- the trees, the lights, the music. But with the holiday season comes the inevitable cries that secularists are continuing their so called "War on Christmas" -- the de-Christianization of the season. But now a new war on Christmas is being launched by a surprising group -- pastors themselves.

To be precise, the folks at the Advent Conspiracy have declared war on the commercial aspects on the holiday, not the religious part.

"It's the shopping, the going into debt, the worrying that if I don't spend enough money, someone will think I don't love them," says Portland pastor Rick McKinley. "Christians get all bent out of shape over the fact that someone didn't say 'Merry Christmas' when I walked into the store. But why are we expecting the store to tell our story? That's just ridiculous."

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city's. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.

It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short.

The city's ineptitude is no secret. "I have never heard anyone, even amongliberals, say, 'If only [our city] could be run like San Francisco,'" says urbanologist Joel Kotkin. "Even other liberal places wouldn't put up with the degree of dysfunction they have in San Francisco. In Houston, the exact opposite of San Francisco, I assume you'd get shot."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, comes in for a lot of stick - not least from columnists like me.

But in the past few days, he has said something important. He has criticised Government ministers for thinking that Christian beliefs are no longer relevant in modern Britain, and for looking at religion as a 'problem'.

Many Government faith initiatives, he observed, assumed that religion was an eccentricity practised by oddballs, foreigners and minorities.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

A new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals some startling differences between Republicans and Democrats on issues of spirituality and supernatural phenomenon.

The study, "Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths," reports that a significant number of Americans practice a mixture of religious beliefs, and "many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects." The report is not specifically about partisan differences, but the results of the study are broken down by party affiliation, among many other categories. And the news on that front is that Democrats are far more likely to believe in supernatural phenomenon than Republicans.

"Conservatives and Republicans report fewer experiences than liberals or Democrats communicating with the dead, seeing ghosts and consulting fortunetellers or psychics," the Pew study says. For example, 21 percent of Republicans report that they have been in touch with someone who is dead, while 36 percent of Democrats say they have done so. Eleven percent of Republicans say they have seen a ghost, while 21 percent of Democrats say so. And nine percent of Republicans say they have consulted a fortuneteller, while 22 percent of Democrats have.

The claim was both simple and terrifying: that temperatures on planet Earth are now ‘likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years’.

As its authors from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) must have expected, it made headlines around the world.

Yet some of the scientists who helped to draft it, The Mail on Sunday can reveal, harboured uncomfortable doubts.

In the words of one, David Rind from the US space agency Nasa, it ‘looks like there were years around 1000AD that could have been just as warm’.

Keith Briffa from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which plays a key role in forming IPCC assessments, urged caution, warning that when it came to historical climate records, there was no new data, only the ‘same old evidence’ that had been around for years.

‘Let us not try to over-egg the pudding,’ he wrote in an email to an IPCC colleague in September 2006.

‘True, there have been many different techniques used to aggregate and scale data - but the efficacy of these is still far from established.’

But when the ‘warmest for 1,300 years’ claim was published in 2007 in the IPCC’s fourth report, the doubters kept silent.

It is only now that their concerns have started to emerge from the thousands of pages of ‘Warmergate’ emails leaked last month from the CRU’s computers, along with references to performing a ‘trick’ to ‘hide’ temperature decline and instructions to resist all efforts by the CRU’s critics to use the Freedom of Information Act to check the unit’s data and conclusions.

In an experiment, participants were randomly assigned to select items they wanted to buy in one of two online stores. One store sold predominantly green products, the other mostly conventional items. Then, in a supposedly unrelated game, all of the participants were allocated $6, to share as they saw fit with an anonymous (and unbeknownst to them, imaginary) recipient. Subjects who had chosen items from the green store coughed up less money, on average, than their counterparts. In a second experiment, participants were again assigned to shop in either a green or conventional store. Then they performed a computer task that involved earning small sums of cash. The setup offered the opportunity to cheat and steal with impunity. The eco-shoppers were more likely to do both.

It would be foolish to draw conclusions about the real world from just one paper and from such an artificial scenario. But the findings add to a growing body of research into a phenomenon known among social psychologists as "moral credentials" or "moral licensing." Historically, psychologists viewed moral development as a steady progression toward more sophisticated decision-making. But an emerging school of thought stresses the capriciousness of moral responses. Several studies propose that the state of our self-image can directly influence our choices from moment to moment. When people have the chance to demonstrate their goodness, even in the most token of ways, they then feel free to relax their ethical standards.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

In response to a separate question, half of Americans (49%) say they have had "a religious or mystical experience - that is, a moment of religious or spiritual awakening." This is roughly the same as the number that said this in 2006 (47%), but it represents a sharp increase over the past four decades. In 1962, only 22% of Americans reported having had such an experience, which grew to about a third in 1976 (31%) and 1994 (33%). Since then, the number has continued to increase to roughly half of the public in this decade.

Differences among Protestants are striking. Strong majorities of white evangelicals (70%) and black Protestants (71%) say they have had religious or mystical experiences, compared with four-in-ten mainline Protestants (40%). Catholics resemble mainline Protestants, with 37% having had a religious or mystical experience.

While climate delegates are quarreling in Copenhagen, and President Barack Obama is collecting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, an important story is unfolding in relative obscurity, in North Korea. Furious over a confiscatory currency "reform," citizens of the world's most repressive state have begun publicly criticizing their government.

It is hard to overstate just how bold a move that is. North Korea's military "is on alert for a possible civil uprising," according to a major South Korean newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo. Reports have been filtering out of North Korea that the country's markets have become arenas of protest, with traders--many of them women in their 40s and 50s--publicly cursing the North Korean authorities.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

...The only conclusion that can be drawn is that while the special relationship may not be dead yet, it's certainly dying, a fact that should be enormously worrying to politicians - and voters - on both sides of the Atlantic.

And yet Obama seems strangely oblivious to the dangerous path he has embarked on, becoming the first U.S. President in modern times to place no importance on the historic relationship between the U.S. and Britain. This is a watershed moment in the political evolution of our two countries.

This EPA endangerment approach carries major risks for the administration. The first risk is that the EPA’s apparently politically motivated endangerment finding may be overturned in the now-inevitable court reviews.

The second risk is that when greenhouse gas regulations should be announced — and certainly when they should ever be implemented — the full responsibility will obviously fall onto the administration, rather than being shared between the administration and Congress (which is what would occur if Congress ever adopted a cap and trade bill). If constituents end up being unhappy with the resulting regulations, and particularly the greatly increased energy costs and decreased employment that will result, it will be obvious who was responsible.

And there may well be some very unhappy constituents.

A third risk is that they will not be able to contain the EPA’s actions, since the law clearly specifies that much smaller sources are subject to regulation than they now contemplate, and legal action may force the EPA to regulate smaller sources whether it wants to or not.

A fourth risk is that the added uncertainties created by the finding, and the added costs in terms of higher energy prices and reduced employment, will further weaken the administration’s claims to be primarily interested in combating the recession — the issue currently most on the mind of voters.

Monday, December 07, 2009

Close followers of the Climategate controversy know that much of the mêlée surrounds an e-mail in which Climate Research Unit (CRU) chief Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature Trick” (MNT) to “hide the decline.” And yet, seventeen days and thousands of almost exclusively on-line op-eds into this scandal, it still seems that very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so, and why Jones’s words have become the slogan for the greatest scientific fraud in history.

If you had to come up with a subject for a debate, one that would persuade more than a thousand people to leave their firesides on a wet winter evening to sit in a draughty sports hall, what would you plump for? It would have to be something pretty charged, you would imagine. Or at least salacious. About Katie Price, perhaps, or Tiger Woods.

But no. The motion that had them standing in the aisles and dangling from the rafters at Wellington College was: "Is atheism the new fundamentalism?" True, this was an Intelligence Squared debate, and there was a good line-up: Lord Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, and Charles Moore of The Daily Telegraph for the motion, Professors A C Grayling and Richard Dawkins against. But still. Atheism? When did this become such a crowd-puller?

Friday, December 04, 2009

ROPING A DEER - Author unknown - probably for good reason. Actual letter from someone who farms, writes well and apparently tried this:I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer.

I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up-- 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold.

The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope ... and then received an education. The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt.. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer-- no chance.

That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison.. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite?

They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when ... I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist.. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head--almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective.

It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.

Deer will strike at you with their front feet.. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal --like a horse --strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope to sort of even the odds.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.

As described in The Washington Times' Inside the Beltway column Tuesday, the multimedia public event to promote Mr. Gore's new book, "Our Choice," included $1,209 VIP tickets that granted the holder a photo opportunity with Mr. Gore and a "light snack."

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that "great annoyance" was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Mr. Gore's program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

There’s a reason Barack Obama squeezed a hastily-arranged "Jobs Summit" into a White House schedule dominated by national health care and Afghanistan. You can find it on every page of "The Economy and Politics of 2010," a new survey of voter attitudes circulating among Democrats that, despite its dry title, betrays a sense of dread and horror among party strategists hoping to avoid defeat in next year's mid-term elections.

The report is the work of Democracy Corps, the influential polling organization run by Democraic strategists James Carville and Stanley Greenberg. The two men found voters are nearly beside themselves about unemployment, angry about the deficit, pessimistic about the future, and in a mood to punish Democrats if things don't get better soon. "This is about the economy, and it's not pretty," they write.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

After the Second World War, the United Kingdom’s newly elected Labour government resolved to build of Britain a New Jerusalem. It nationalized the commanding heights of the economy and inaugurated the cradle-to-grave welfare state. By the 1970s, the UK faced an economic crisis unrivaled since the Great Depression. Shabby and hopeless, Britain had become, in Henry Kissinger’s words, a “tragedy” of a nation, reduced to “begging, borrowing, stealing.”

Congressmen John Carter (R-TX) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) yesterday introduced the Geithner Penalty Waiver Act, requiring that the IRS assess the same penalty against U.S. taxpayers that came forward in the UBS tax fraud investigation as paid by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for failing to pay taxes on his IMF income -- zero. From Congressman Carter's press release:

Carter says the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandates equal penalties for similar offenses, and that the failure of the IRS to assess any penalties against Geithner demands similar penalties for all taxpayers with substantially equivalent cases. “This bill seeks to codify what is now established by the law of precedent,” says Carter. “The Geithner case has established a legal precedent for the determination of penalties by the IRS, and that precedent can be cited in all federal tax courts. The penalty is now set at zero.” “Taxpayers who willfully attempt to evade paying their fair taxes should pay a penalty, or our tax code becomes unenforceable,” says Carter. “This bill is not to reward tax evaders, but to defend the Rule of Law itself. If we as a nation choose not to enforce the law against the politically privileged, then we cannot enforce the law against others without undermining respect for the law itself.”

Monday, November 30, 2009

The overseas reviews for President Obama’s foreign policy are starting to pour in — and they’re not favorable. Bob Ainsworth, the British defense secretary, has blamed Obama for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan. According to the Telegraph:

Mr. Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticizing the U.S. President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban. A “period of hiatus” in Washington — and a lack of clear direction — had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said. Senior British Government sources have become increasingly frustrated with Mr. Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month, with several former British defense chiefs echoing the concerns.

The President is “Obama the Impotent,” according to Steven Hill of the Guardian. The Economist calls Obama the “Pacific (and pussyfooting) president.” The Financial Times refers to “relations between the U.S. and Europe, which started the year of talks as allies, near breakdown.” The German magazine Der Spiegel accuses the president of being “dishonest with Europe” on the subject of climate change. Another withering piece in Der Spiegel, titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” lists the instances in which Obama is being rolled.

PJTV and PJM now present a complete database of the Climategate documents with a comment section for readers to respond to the individual entries and a way to rank those entries according to interest level. Also available: a roundup of commentary and videos on the subject and Roger L. Simon on "Climategate: Terrified Liars of the UN"

Saturday, November 28, 2009

This week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support—not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington's Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment.

From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of—and warning for—the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, "a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man." They once held "an unromantically high opinion of Obama," and were key to his rise, but now they are concluding that the president isn't "the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought."

Thursday, November 26, 2009

A worrisome picture emerges. Mr. Obama's popularity abroad mainly reflects foreign perceptions of how well he suits their interests and values. Yes, foreigners like America better under Mr. Obama - not because they love the U.S. the way we do, but because they think he favors the retrenchment of American power and global influence.

The question is, do we Americans admire Mr. Obama for the same reasons? Do we recognize and want the image of Mr. Obama's America that foreigners have? Should we automatically gauge the value of our policies and interests by how much others like them?

Sometimes Mr. Obama gets alarmingly close to suggesting that. In China, he told CNN, "We've restored America's standing in the world, and that's confirmed by the polls ... before my election, less than half the people - maybe less than 40 percent of the people thought you could count on America to do the right thing. Now it's up to 75 percent."

Put aside the question of whether his popularity has gained international support for concrete American policies. What is interesting is that the foreign image of Mr. Obama's America is increasingly at variance with Americans' views. Many Americans, particularly independents who voted for him, are turning away from his policies because they don't conform to the America they envision. They may still like his personal story, but they are getting worried that he's taking the country in the wrong direction - the very direction many foreigners applaud.

If this trend continues, Americans may end up turning against Mr. Obama precisely for what makes him popular abroad - namely, pursuing policies that weaken America's position in the world.

Remember this the next time someone evaluates the success of the president's foreign policies by foreign opinion polls.

"16 Be joyful always; 17 pray continually; 18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

Paul knew a simple truth which we too often miss. Our lives are defined by how we deal with difficulty, in other words "give thanks in all circumstances."

No one can escape the difficult times of life. Jesus said, "in this life you will have tribulation."

So what separates the survivors from the casualties of life?

Many things factor into that equation but one of the primary differences is attitude. It is how we each deal with what life hands us.

Paul's attitude about life was framed by one passage that he wrote. "God causes all things to work for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose."

In all things, we need to remember that there is an understanding that no matter what we face, no matter who causes it, no matter how good or bad it is, give thanks in all circumstances.

That's how Paul tempered his attitude. By an understanding that God was bigger than his circumstances, stronger than any problem he faced, and able to use any mistake he made.

How do we learn to deal with difficulty? By remembering that God is in the midst of all things in our lives and is in control.

As we come to this Thanksgiving week, it is important that we not focus just on one day of fun, food and football. We also need to focus on attitude. An attitude that should prevail in all our lives is one of giving thanks in all things.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The "Rainbow Elite" of Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic" has been a power base ultimately consolidated by the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama volleyball game with the White House.

Had Hillary Clinton won the election in 2008, a Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton ownership of the Oval office would have looked … uh … "fishy" … and we all know how important it is for the bipartisan Progressive Movement to root out anything that looks "fishy".

The sudden arrival of "The One" seems to have saved the Progressive Day and its 100 year-old game plan.

Cartoon by Robert Minor in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1911. Karl Marx surrounded by an appreciative audience of Wall Street financiers: John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, John D. Ryan of National City Bank and Morgan partner George W. Perkins. Immediately behind Marx is Teddy Roosevelt, leader of the Progressive Party.

This 1911 cartoon featuring Karl Marx being fawned upon by Wall Street moguls, this Capitalist/Communist love affair, this agreement to share a totalitarian power over the "Collective" … hmmm … it is all coming true, largely thanks to George Soros and Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky, the Marxist, gave Barack Obama the formula for Revolutionary "Change" that a number of Obama's best friends "can believe in". George Soros, perhaps Obama's best friend, gave the Presidential candidate all the money and influence he would need in order to defeat even "the most influential man in the world", Bill Clinton. Plus, of course, Bill's wife, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

We're not talking sky's-the-limit poker but end-of-the-universe power games.

The Progressive Club's formula, used by both the Clintons and the Bushes, has never been so fully articulated and boldly put into action than by the Soros/Alinsky prodigy, Barack Obama.

Recently the increasingly Cheshire cat expression upon the face of George Soros and his sphinx-like silence about what is going to happen to the economy – an outcome he is sure of but unwilling to share – well … look at that cartoon again!

We've all seen reports that Barack Obama's job approval rating has recently fallen below 50 percent in the Gallup poll for the first time since the president took office in January. A look inside those numbers -- Gallup publishes a weekly breakdown of its results by demographic groups -- shows that there are a lot of other firsts in the polling:

Among age groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama is below 50 percent with every age group of Americans except those between 18 and 29. He's at 48 percent with people in the 30-49 range; 46 percent with people in the 50-64 range; and 42 percent with people 65 and over. Among those 18-29, he's at 61 percent.

Among racial groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama support among white Americans has fallen below 40 percent. He's at 39 percent among whites; 91 percent among blacks, and 70 percent among Hispanics.

Monday, November 23, 2009

About Me

Prior to his position as lead pastor in Hilmar California, Ron was senior pastor of Cross Road Assembly in Florence Oregon. He previously served on the pastoral staff at Atlantic Christian Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa, as well as Academic Site Director at Cornerstone Christian College in the same city. He was raised in California.
Ron has a B.A. in Ministerial Studies from Bethany College; an M.A. in Cross-Cultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a Master of Divinity from Assemblies of God Theological Seminary.
Ron is married to Karol, his wife of 25 years. They have a 14 year old daughter, Katie.
In his spare time Ron enjoys antiques, bicycling, computers, old cars, shooting, fishing and reading.
e-mail me at ronsbloviating at gmail dot com (change the at and dot)